Saturday, 5 May 2012

En Suite Progress and Spring

The en suite has got to a point where we will be moving in
soon, but it still has a few niggling things to be finished so I am not yet going
to show the finished product, instead in true English fashion I will discuss
the weather.

Stormy Weather

Spring is slow coming this year and the blossom we usually
can count on following one behind the other are quite often several weeks apart
this year. The amount of rain we have
had is spectacular with floods all around the country, but we still do not have
enough to refill all the reservoirs and aquifers, so we may still have a
hosepipe ban in summer.

One problem we have here in the UK is that traditionally it
rains a lot, so we are geared up to try and get rid of the surplus as quickly
as possible, with little need to build long term storage. When we have a drought this works against us
since when it does rain, much of the water simply runs away and the reservoirs
and aquifers run out quite quickly.
Although it is over thirty years since a similar drought, long term
planning is needed to adapt to the changing weather we seem to be experiencing.

Rain streaking past the illuminated cobweb hanging on a street lamp

It is the May Bank holiday this weekend and the temperatures
are still like early April. Once upon a
time, May Day was celebrated on the first of May, but in recent times this has
been altered to the first Monday in May, so that it creates a long
weekend. Once maidens danced around the
Maypole on the first of May, no matter what day it fell upon and a fair was
held, but those days are long gone and now we just have a mad rush to get away
for a short break, clogging the motorways and airports.

Meanwhile back home, spring has produced a little clump of
bluebells and other blossom in our garden, whilst May blossom lines the country
lanes and suburban avenues with white and pink blooms. But it is still too cold to sit out of doors
and the heavy rain has knocked all the earlier blossoms off the flowering shrubs
and bushes.

Our own blubells

We are being visited by bird
families, juvenile and senior birds feeding together where the fledglings are old
enough to leave the nest but still want to be fed by their parents. Some humans I know are like that.

Robin junior and Robin senior feeding together. Adult robins will not allow another adult into their territory, only their own chicks, and then only for a while.

We have had a pair of great tits nesting in a nest box in
the garden and I have been trying to get pictures of them feeding, but they
never stay still long enough and the best pictures I have obtained are mostly hidden in foliage, they are annoyingly elusive.

If you look closely you can just see the adult entering the box - a case of now you see him now you don't

You can just make out an adult Bluetit feeding its chick through the foliageThese are not the birds living in the next box in our garden, they are Great tits

Another bit of excitement arose at the end of the week, when
a neighbour arranged to have a tree that overhangs our front drive cut down. Since more of it was on our side of the garden
wall, the tree surgeon had to work from within our garden and we had to move our
cars from the drive to give him enough
space to work.

Not much left on the tree, it is all in our front drive

It is a shame such a mature tree had to go but it was
beginning to destroy their garden wall. To
be perfectly honest, it had always been a bit of a nuisance to us. Being a member of the eucalyptus family, it
was an evergreen and it shed leaves and twigs all year round, with occasional strips
of bark which then blew around the front garden causing litter everywhere. As well as that, pigeons would often perch in
the branches over our cars and on flying off would lighten their load as they
took off, leaving a number of cleaning jobs for us on the roofs of our cars.

So that is it for today, I will keep you in suspense about
the Snafu house en suite refurbishment, but it is looking good despite some
disasters that slowed down the work, but which have all been overcome. I will tell more next time, watch this space.

MorningAJ thanks for that, you are quite right, they are bluetits. A great tit's head is black down ot the eye level, blue tits have a white strip above the eyes and a blue crown. My only excuse is that there is too much going on here to spend a lot of time sorting pictures. PS I have updated the post

Everything here is green, green green - so wonderful for the eyes and the soul!

DOTH is doing well, and considering she can only use one arm effectively, she is keeping us very busy spring cleaning. Plus I am the designated driver for all things, so it seems we are in the car more than the house these days. I'll be glad when she gets back to work!

About Me

Happily married, retired. The name SNAFU was accidental, I got cross with Blogger because my name is so commonplace any variation I could think of was already in use. Computer systems do not do sarcasm and so it accepted my comment as my user name. I am not hiding my identity, my name is Pete Morris. Lifelong geek and technophile. Bookshelves in nearly every room of the house, from Blyton to Einstein. Spent most of my working life training adults in geeky stuff, from basic electrics to computer systems. My heroes are, amongst others, Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson and Eric Laithwaite and if you don’t need to look them up in Wikipedia then you are my kind of geek. .